John’s interview from the May 2014 issue of Guitar World and more
This is a photo taken earlier today at the I-M.net HQ. We have acquired some awesome magazines with features on John, thanks to one exceptionally kind man named Frank. Thank you, Frank!
As it is obvious after a couple of glances at the image, none of these magazines is the May 2014 issue of Guitar World which a lot of you asked about; but do not despair – proper scans will be coming soon and in the meantime, the whole set exists in low quality and it was readable enough to make the actual interview available for you!
Remember, it is always better if you purchase the magazine, so you can have a copy of your own at home.
[clear]Here are a couple of excerpts.
When you approach these longer guitar pieces—songs like “Same,” from 2013’s Outsides, or, on the new album, “Cinch” — what are you looking to achieve?
I’m trying to challenge myself. I try to do things that would be inconvenient for a guitar player to solo over. That’s what’s fun for me—to see the correspondence between my imagination and my habits and my intelligence. I want them to all coordinate with one another and to have a hard time doing so. Like, I don’t want to just be soloing over a vamp in E or something. I want the chords to be changing, I want the key to be modulating. I want it to be something that a blues guitar player couldn’t just sit down and play along with. Looking over history I notice you have these people who are really good at soloing over modulations, like George Harrison or Jeff Beck or Mick Ronson. But I notice they don’t play as wildly as guys like Frank Zappa or Jimi Hendrix. And the reason Frank Zappa or Jimi Hendrix played more wildly is because they soloed mostly over vamps. So what I try to do is play over the types of progressions that people like Mick Ronson or George Harrison had to solo over but do it in a way that is as wild as Jimi Hendrix or Frank Zappa.
So even the actual act of playing music onstage began to lose its appeal to you?
Well, yeah, because you’re repeating yourself over and over. You might throw in in an extra little riff somewhere, or you might do a little improvisation at the end of the show, but basically you’re doing the same thing every night. And the audience is experiencing it as if it’s the first time it’s happened, but you’re aware that you’ve been doing it every night for the last year and a half. You’re acting like you’re all excited about it, but you’re not. ft’s just a big game of pretend that the audience somehow believes.
The fact that you write and record at home makes it possible to immerse yourself in that creative process to whatever degree you want.
My life is pretty much doing music all day-every day. But I also spend a fair a.mount of time just laying around and reading books watching TV or hanging out with my wife. I do music for a few days, then I go away for a few days. For me it’s not work.
That sounds like a nice way to live.
It’s how I’ve decided to live. I tend to let music factors guide me rather than factors of finance. And to me, music is fun and it’s relaxing an it’s interesting and it’s stimulating. And I don’t have to balance it with somebody pushing me in this direction or that direction. I don’t have needs from the outside world. So I would say my life is pretty even. There’s not a whole lot of stress in my life.
You can read the entire thing by clicking here and the scans are below.
And here come the other features, bulk-scanned and/or exported from PDF format today.
Discussions Magazine – April 1st 2014
This interview with John was announced some days ago and is available to read online; but it was also in the high-quality digital edition of the magazine which you might have not subscribe to. So, for your convenience, the two pages on John have been put up here and if you are interested in the magazine itself, go and subscribe to it.
Premier Guitar – April 2014
This magazine’s feature was made available to read online about a month ago, but now you can enjoy it as a set of scans as well.
Premier Guitar – March 2014
Thanks to this very issue of this very magazine, news of Enclosure broke. You can read the review here and the scan of its page, accompanied by two other reviews is below.
Guitar Player – April 2014
That would be the one we covered here. The interview is now available to read in its typed out version and you can do so here.
* Many thanks to Mel and Jim for having provided us with temporary scans of Guitar World; and to Mike for the magazine.
So, what do you think of the Guitar World interview? Does it sound different from the other 2014 features? Share your thoughts with the rest of the community in comments to this news item!
